Our attention is finite, yet we spend it everywhere but where it matters. This is not a moral failure. It is a structural one. Attention economics is the idea that in a world overflowing with information, human attention becomes the scarce resource. Whoever captures it, holds power. Over time, this has reshaped not just markets, but inner lives. What we notice. What we ignore. What we can tolerate. What we can no longer sit with. For a long time, people warned that television would rot our brains. In hindsight, television looks almost generous. A show required you to stay for forty minutes. A film asked for two hours. A detective story invited you to notice details, to remember names, to hold multiple threads in your mind at once. You watched. You followed. You waited. Listening to music meant staying long enough to learn lyrics. Reading meant sitting with confusion until meaning arrived. Writing a poem meant wrestling with language, not skimming it. Even boredom had a purpose—it ...
That Could Never Be a Kenyan: What the Titanic Teaches Us About Honor, Sacrifice, and Our Failing Social Contract
"We are dressed in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen." — Benjamin Guggenheim, Titanic survivor testimony When the RMS Titanic began to sink into the frigid Atlantic Ocean on the night of April 14, 1912, it wasn’t only a ship that went down. What rose in its place, through the testimony of survivors and the haunting silence of the sea, was a mirror: one that showed the best and worst of humanity. Men and women made choices that revealed character beyond wealth, class, or age. Some were lauded for generations. Others, despite surviving, were socially exiled. This was more than maritime disaster. It was a moral reckoning. And yet, watching The Digital Resurrection of the Titanic , one thought struck deep: "That could never be a Kenyan." The Gentlemen Who Stayed Benjamin Guggenheim , a wealthy American industrialist, helped women and children into lifeboats before retreating below deck with his valet. He dressed in his finest, telling a steward: “Tel...